MAGA Hat Shame Game Is Not About Racism, It’s About Suppressing Dissent

We’ve gone from bad to worse this week in the debate over whether or not the MAGA hat represents racism and hatred.

Among many other notable examples was actress/activist Alyssa Milano, who tweeted Sunday that the “MAGA hat is the new white hood.” In response to the wave of criticism she received over her remarks, she unapologetically doubled down in an opinion piece published at The Wrap (bolded emphasis added):

Let me be clear: I’m not saying everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I’m saying that everyone who proudly wears the red hat identifies with an ideology of white supremacy and misogyny. Everyone who proudly wears those hats gives a tacit endorsement for the hatred and the violence we’ve seen these past few years.

On the same day, Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan declared that the MAGA hat was the equivalent of wrapping yourself in the Confederate flag:

The MAGA hat speaks to America’s greatness with lies of omission and contortion. To wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag. The look may be more modern and the fit more precise, but it’s just as woeful and ugly.

To wear the hat is to take on history and divisiveness. Because whatever personal meaning might be attached to the hat, the new broader cultural meaning overrides. It is too late to save the hat from this fate. And it’s too soon to try to reclaim it and give it new life.

Got that? If you wear the MAGA hat, you are giving “tacit endorsement for the hatred and violence…” according to Milano. And “it’s too soon to try to reclaim [the hat] and give it new life” per Givhan.

It doesn’t matter if you are one of the vast majority of people who support Trump who aren’t a racist, and who don’t have a hateful bone in your body. You’re endorsing racism and hatred if you wear that hat, and it can’t be “reclaimed and given new life”, so you should just stop wearing it, you hate-filled loser.

Sound familiar? It should.

“Racism and hatred!!” was the default card played by Democrats throughout the entire 2 term presidency of President Barack Obama (and it happened frequently even before he was elected president). There was literally nothing, no matter how benign or constructively critical that you, as a Republican or conservative, could say about Obama without it being mischaracterized as “racist.”

It’s the same thing when you criticize Hillary Clinton. If you’re critical of her or disagree with her, then you hate women. Your opinions are not legitimate and will not be taken seriously, so shut up, you woman hater.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s entire social media strategy when it comes to disagreement or criticism is to accuse her critics of not liking her because she’s a “brown woman who speaks out” (to paraphrase). She’s the direct result of the left’s and modern feminism’s emphasis on projecting eternal victimhood for sympathy/power, and for purposes of squelching dissent. No matter what is said about her, flattering or not, pro or con, if it doesn’t meet her approval she’ll say it happened because she’s a woman.

Seriously, is there any issue where @AOC hasn't somehow found a way to play the woman card? I find this tactic insulting, and diminishing to actual cases where someone is indeed attacking a woman based on her gender. pic.twitter.com/04RW0VNGbG

And when high profile public figures on the left engage in this tactic on social media, whether it’s reflexively yelling “racism” or “sexism” or “hater” at critics, they typically get tens of thousands of retweets/likes/shares by others on the left who endorse their message.

The TV appearances and speaking engagement invites increase, too, so they can amplify and spread the word: We must shame into silence those who disagree with us.

Wear a MAGA hat? Shut up, hater. Didn’t like President Obama’s policies? Shut up, racist. Thought Hillary Clinton was bad for the country? Shut up, you sexist pig. You support a woman’s right to privacy in bathrooms, showers, locker rooms and fitting rooms? Shut up, bigot.

The left knows that unless they can pack the Supreme Court with like-minded ideologues, they can’t legally ban free speech. So their alternative is to play the shame game in an effort to shut it down if they don’t agree with it.